


Thomas Hamilton: A Life.

by AstronautSquid



Series: tumblr prompts [2]
Category: Black Sails
Genre: Angst, Bad Parenting, Character Study, Class Differences, Death from Old Age, Domestic, Fluff, Hand & Finger Kink, Implied/Referenced Abuse, M/M, Post-Canon, Pre-Canon, Sugar Cane Plantations Are Horrible Even By Plantation Standards, Thomas' Eton Sweethearts
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-08-31
Updated: 2017-09-22
Packaged: 2018-12-22 04:15:20
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 15,742
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11959497
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AstronautSquid/pseuds/AstronautSquid
Summary: Thomas Hamilton is born with two front teeth.He dies with the morning sun in his eyes.This is everything in between.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [redwhale](https://archiveofourown.org/users/redwhale/gifts).

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Thomas Hamilton is born.
> 
> Also appearing: pre-natal teeth, flattering portraits, kissing boys at Eton, and post-coital conversations gone really wrong.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this was supposed to be a cute little ficlet for redwhale's request of "thomas + touch." it then morphed over the past two months or so into... this. infinite thanks to redwhale, who has been the best and most patient cheerleader.
> 
> this is in many ways a portrait of the thomas i see in canon. who loves whole-heartedly, who plays devil's advocate, who has no genuine friends in london because he is too intense for most people, who wears his heart on his sleeve, who tells his navy liaison right away that he better scram if he isn't willing to sacrifice his career for an outlandish plan, who is able to keep up with and earn the devotion of people like miranda and james. who ruthlessly sticks his fingers in other people's wounds bc he sees no shame in being vulnerable and lacks the urge to guard himself.
> 
> and a musing on what he becomes when he finally acquires wounds of his own that are too tender to touch.

 

 

 _"You think I can play devil's advocate. Thomas would have played that game with you from dusk until dawn. And everything you hold sacred, he'd leave in tatters. Not from malice or hate, but from love. From a desire to see the yoke of shame lifted from your shoulders."_  
  
( Miranda Barlow \- Season 1, Episode 6)  
  
\---

Thomas Hamilton was born with two front teeth.

When first lifted to the breast after being pushed out into existence, he bit his mother's nipple in his eagerness to partake in a world he did not yet know. Florence Hamilton gasped and bit her tongue and hoped that he would be a more docile child once he had had his fill. The doctor advised removing the teeth, since the gums were not developed enough to hold them, and he might choke on them should they loosen.

Alfred Hamilton thumbed at his newborn son's cheek, inspecting his heir. Thomas grasped his finger with determined, pudgy hands and pulled it into his mouth to nip at it.

"Already biting the hand that feeds you, aren't you?" His father handed Thomas back to his mother, whose breasts were aching and heavy because Florence was afraid to give them to her son again.

\---

Thomas could never resist tonguing at a sore tooth.

He would nudge at his milk teeth as their previously secure standing in his jaw weakened, and took morbid delight in the twinges of pain if he pushed too hard. If they were to be replaced anyway, what use in being overly careful? Thomas didn't mourn their loss but instead grimaced in front of the mirror to see if he could see the strong new tooth poking up through the red flesh.

Similarly, not a scab on his knees or elbows ever went unpicked, much to his parents' dismay. He lost count of how often he was chided for setting a scratch to bleeding again. And never was there a shortage of scratches, for not a cat was left unbothered, not a nook or cranny unexplored.

It was a habit Thomas kept, and cultivated, as he grew to manhood.

While there were no more teeth to dislodge and significantly less scabs to pick, his attention remained focused on the cracks and sores. As he had discovered early in life, the things that people deemed untouchable remained the most interesting, and were the most likely to produce noteworthy reactions if prodded.

His mother was a demure woman, never one to stand up to his father for Thomas, though outside her husband's presence she would run her hands through his hair and tell him what a brave little man he was, to bear his father's criticisms so well. She made it sound like an admirable thing, though he wasn't sure what was admirable about biting his tongue in the face of what was clearly a lack of reason, a lack of kindness. Thomas liked the sound of the words, however, and grew determined to become worthy of what _he_ thought they should stand for.

\---

When Thomas was nine years of age, Alfred Hamilton commissioned a portrait of himself.

He allowed his son to attend the second sitting, during which Thomas dutifully observed the process. It occured to him that the painter, one harried-looking Mr Hackberry, seemed to spend an awfully long time mixing paint, much longer than he would have expected. Mr Hackberry seemed intent to get the colour just right, adjusting tiny nuances that Thomas could hardly tell apart, before applying it to the canvas with a long-handled brush.

The paints had a soft, oily sheen to them, and he watched as they were spread, in bands of changing hues, across the pallette. Thomas caught himself rubbing his thumb and forefinger together.

"Mr Hackberry," he said as the brush lavished attention upon Alfred Hamilton's sketched-in ear. The painter looked over his shoulder at Thomas.

"Yes, young lord?"

"Do you often make your portraits more flattering?" Thomas tilted his head, hands clasped loosely behind his back. "Surely some people would not want a perfectly life-like portrait hanging over their mantle."

Mr Hackberry went very still. His eyes darted in mild panic between Thomas and his father. Thomas noticed that, with the painter's attention drawn elsewhere, the brush suddenly hovered precariously close to the canvas. He watched a reddish smudge of paint alight on the dark ringlets of his father's formal wig.

"Thomas!" Alfred Hamilton snapped and Thomas resisted the urge to inelegantly blow out a breath. He knew this tone of voice. "You are being most impertinent. Cease your chattering this instant, or you'll face the consequences."

Thomas sucked his lips inward but said nothing, staring fixedly ahead at the red paint smudge on the portrait.

"What are you waiting for?" his father barked at Mr Hackberry, who flinched. "I'm not paying you to twiddle your thumbs, am I?"

The artist hunched towards his canvas again. From where he stood, Thomas could see the grimace Mr Hackberry made in the safety behind the easel, and felt profoundly envious.

The sitting lasted another three quarters of an hour. Alfred Hamilton appraised the painting's progress for a moment or two, not so much as a twitch on his face. Then he gave a curt nod and stalked out of the sitting room with a wave at Mr Hackberry to follow him.

Left to himself at last, Thomas moved to stand in front of the canvas and studied it intently. The proportions were larger than life and Thomas could feel those light blue eyes upon himself like a touch. Gaze roaming over the wet expanse of brushwork, multi-hued and tender as a bruise, Thomas supposed he did have the answer to his question after all. As always, it had been left to him to find out for himself.

Mr Hackberry had clearly drawn out the favourable qualities of his subject while softening reality to be more agreeable to his client. Alfred Hamilton's cheeks had a rosier glow than they ever did outside of rage, and his eyes were less watery and more benevolent in their superiority than Thomas had ever seen them.

Most of all Thomas could not take his eyes off the half-finished hands. The light glistened on the unevennesses in the brush strokes, drying slow as a dull Sunday afternoon. The painted fingers, even incomplete as they were, looked strong and capable and, inexplicably, inviting.

They were hands Thomas could not help but want to touch.

He could not remember the last time he had held his father's hand.

The oil paints were slick and supple between his fingertips as he curiously rubbed them together. Thomas imagined them sinking into his skin so they filled up the tiny whorls and ridges, letting his fingerprints disappear until he was not Thomas Hamilton at all.

He marveled at how willingly the paint responded to his touch, how easily he could will it into grooves and canals by drawing a finger through it. He discovered that tapping the surface lightly produced tiny peaks. He repeated the motion all across the portrait's unnaturally smooth cheeks, entirely absorbed in the way it looked as if he had caused gooseflesh to spring up on his father's face. For a moment Thomas thought about the idea of eliciting something other than scorn from his father. Then it struck him that he had never seen gooseflesh on anyone's face, and he half-heartedly attempted to smooth the paint back into place.

Thomas was quite absorbed in his thoughts, and only the sound of glass shattering behind him drew him back to the present. He flinched and turned to see his mother, mouth covered by her hands that had evidently been holding the glass of wine which now lay broken at her feet.

"What have you _done_ , Thomas?" She rushed to pull him away from the canvas. "If your father sees - oh, where is that artist, maybe he can fix this before Alfred notices -"

The artist, as it happened, could not restore the painting in time; could not even be sent for, because Alfred Hamilton discovered what had happened scarce half a minute after his wife had, Hackberry in tow.

Thomas had been the object of his father's ire before. He had been threatened with the promise of a beating on a number of occasions, though none had ever actually taken place. His father had never been angry enough to administer it himself, and his pride forbade the idea of ordering Thomas' tutor to punish him, even though it was the done thing in other households. No hand of lower birth was going to discipline his son.

Today, however, Alfred Hamilton was incandescent.

The artist, looking wretched over the state of his work, was dismissed sharply from the room. Thomas felt contrition at Mr Hackberry's obvious distress, realising only now just how much effort it would likely take the painter to save the portrait, possibly even to recreate it entirely.

When he was gone, Alfred Hamilton ordered Thomas to lower his breeches and bend over, hands on the back of the settee.

Thomas pushed down the urge to squeeze shut his eyes at the sharp pain of his father's hand hitting his backside. More than just the pain it was shock and humiliation that drove tears into his wide eyes. His body felt far away, as though he saw the room from above, floating passively beyond the scene that played out. His mother was weeping uselessly where she had positioned herself between Alfred Hamilton and the spoilt painting, as if to shield it from her husband's eyes and to prevent its sight from spurring him to new heights of anger.

With a brutal and absurd clarity, Thomas realised that his transgression had been borne from the child-like desire to feel his father's hand, in a distant approximation of what he thought should have been the natural result of paternal affection. And indeed, it had brought him the first touch of Alfred Hamilton's hand in as long as he could remember; it was merely the manner in which it happened that was not what he had wanted.

Thomas pressed his lips together hard, for he was uncertain if the sounds rising in his chest were sobs of tears or of laughter, and he did not want to give his father more reasons to be cruel.

After, Alfred Hamilton stalked to the door without a glance at Thomas. When he saw his wife rushing to her son's side, he snapped, "You spoil him. You indulge him, and let him do as he pleases, and reassure him when I chastise him for misdeeds. This is only the natural consequence, and you should place as much blame on yourself as on your soft son."

And Florence Hamilton had rushed out of the room, sobbing, followed more sedately by her husband.

Thomas loosened his white-knuckled grip on the settee. He could feel a quiet buzzing beneath his skin. He was not sure what it was, only that it urged him to his own room, where he stripped out of his clothes and curled up in bed.

He stared at the residue of paint on his fingers, downright garish compared to his own skin. He thought again how it it might conceal his fingerprints. He thought of being an unnoticed, smooth thing, a whisp of nothing that could hush about unseen. Able to touch all the things it wanted without ever leaving a trace or facing reprisals.

Thomas dismissed the thought.

He could not stop the world from noticing his touch, and he was not going to stop putting his hands on it anytime soon.

Thomas would simply have to make sure his fingerprints would be seen and praised for art themselves. That others would see what he had touched and think it good, think it the _better_ for it.

\---

At Eton, Thomas learnt to touch boys.

He couldn't leave his fingerprints as visibly as he would have liked, but he knew them in furtive glances across crowded rooms, in collars pulled up secretively and in remarks hiding double meanings known only to himself.

Thomas never stopped prying at things other people did not want touched, dissecting ignorance and false beliefs and making more enemies than friends with his combative nature. He split open falsehoods and backwards thinking, bursting them like rotten fruit, and ended up turning away a number of boys the taste of whom was still fresh on his tongue.

The problem, as it turned out, was that Thomas seemed to lack the urge to guard his wounds, to nurse them quietly as others would. Beyond a requisite amount of reticence for safety's sake, such as keeping his preference for other boys to himself for the most part, Thomas had no skeletons that he was not prepared - if not happy - to unearth in the pursuit of greater understanding.

Rare was the companion that relished his ruthless questioning as much as the other things his mouth could do.

\---

Thomas' first conquest was Gabriel.

Two years older and rakishly handsome, Gabriel had caught his eye easily enough. He wasn't in love, Thomas was fairly sure, neither of them, but he enjoyed the push and pull, the lingering looks and cocked eyebrows. Gabriel loved to run his hands through Thomas' blonde hair whenever they could steal away for a moment of shared privacy. He had wonderful long-fingered hands with blunt nails that would scrape just so along Thomas' scalp, which Thomas discovered made his knees go quite weak.

Thomas had never understood his father's pleasure in going hunting - until now. After the first time he reaped the rewards of the chase, sneaking away from the nightly Fellows' Garden, he grinned wildly to himself as he tried half-heartedly to fix his collar and straighten his red school coat. He definitely preferred _la petite mort_ over the more final kind of death that constituted the climax of a fox hunt.

The third time they met in a room where spare furniture and bedding were kept, out of the way of the school's daily bustle. Gabriel brought along a vial of oil.

After, Thomas prodded at himself in fascination, at the soreness of his flesh and the slick evidence of Gabriel's presence. Gabriel, flushed face half buried in the pillow, watched him with an unreadable expression. He lifted his head willingly enough when Thomas leant in for a kiss, though he responded more slowly than the pace Thomas set.

"Next time," Thomas declared as he settled on his side. "Next time I'll fuck _you._ "

Gabriel frowned. "What?"

Thomas leant in to nip at his mouth, but received no response beyond a bemused look.

"I liked it. And it seems like you enjoyed your part too. I want to try." He flashed Gabriel his wickedest smile. Secretly he imagined how good Gabriel would look, all loose-limbed and spent with a sheen of oil between his thighs. "I'm a fast learner."

Gabriel pushed himself up to his elbows, shaking his head. He ruffled Thomas' hair, but somehow the gesture felt more dismissive than affectionate.

"I couldn't spread my legs for you," he said, warmly but firmly. "I'm related to the royal family, Thomas."

Thomas frowned. "So distantly you might as well not be," he said bluntly. Everyone knew Gabriel's mother had a cousin whose grand-aunt had married a duke whose heritage - well, and so on. It was one of the first things _anyone_ learned about him, usually from Gabriel himself.

"As son of a duke, I still outrank you." Gabriel sighed, as if having to explain something tediously simple. He pulled Thomas closer by the jaw and kissed him thoroughly. Thomas let him, though his mind was quietly churning away. Gabriel pulled Thomas' hand between his legs.

"See what you do to me," he mumbled into Thomas' open mouth. "You look unbearably good all tousled like this. Again?"

Thomas considered for a moment.

"Are you certain you don't want me to fuck you?"

Gabriel groaned - probably in exasperation more than arousal at the prospect.

"It's really quite nice, you know. And you've left me so _very_ sore." Thomas gave a pointed squeeze of his hand and saw something flash in Gabriel's eyes at the blunt flattery. Thomas thought he should probably feel bashfulness of some sort at his own words. "I couldn't possibly do it again now."

"There's other ways," Gabriel replied and Thomas sighed.

Half of him wanted to argue, but he _was_ tempted by Gabriel's request. He was not in the habit of denying himself pleasure.

He rolled onto his side.

As Gabriel pushed between Thomas' thighs, Thomas couldn't quite keep his thoughts present. He was mulling over their conversation. Never before had he been denied something because he had been too low of birth. Thomas wasn't offended, as such - it was novel, more like. That Gabriel wasn't willing to flaunt so silly a rule for the pleasure of getting fucked seemed ridiculous to him. Thomas had been looking forward to trying, too.

He twisted his head to peer up at Gabriel's face.

"You know," he said hopefully. "As pertains to the subject of rank and social hierarchy, just the other day I read an essay that, although a bit clumsily structured, really -"

" _Christ_ , Thomas!" Gabriel groaned, brow furrowed in concentration. "Can't you just leave a good thing be?"

"Why, Gabriel!" Thomas tore his eyes open as wide as he could in mock outrage. "Are you taking the name of our Lord in vain? Have I really witnessed you committing so heinous a -"

He was cut off when Gabriel simply stuck a finger in his mouth.

Well, Thomas thought when the other hand snuck around to his front to speed things along, Gabriel couldn't be the only like-minded boy in all of Eton College.

\---

"I don't understand you, Thomas," Nicholas said without looking at him, doing up the buttons of his shirt. "Why can't you just keep your mouth shut for once?"

Thomas rolled over onto his side, sprawled warm and loose in the sheets.

"What, because I asked why you don't go after Francis instead of me, when you're mooning over him plain as day?"

Thomas rubbed a hand over his face. The linens still smelled of warm skin and sweat and he felt like drawing Nicholas back into bed. He wasn't inclined towards jealousy, and it wasn't jealousy that drove him to ask. It was the awareness that to know one's self was to be the master of one's fate, and to see Nicholas so clearly adrift pained Thomas.

Nicholas shot him a venomous look, a deep fold etched above his crooked nose, and Thomas blinked at the profundity of the emotion revealed.

"Nicholas, I didn't mean to upset you! I was just wondering." When his words didn't have the desired effect, Thomas tried a different angle. "It's alright to seek solace with someone else - remember Genesis? Man isn't meant to be alone, and I think if only you talked to me -" He stopped, considering how to continue. "There's comfort and goodness in speaking truth, if only you allow yourself to."

Thomas collapsed back onto the bed when Nicholas threw a pillow into his face.

"Well, that's the problem with you! You care more for truth than you do for people!"

Thomas stayed in bed long after Nicholas had slammed the door behind him, staring up at the ceiling.

\---

During his last year at Eton, there was Albert.

Albert had been on Thomas' mind for nigh-on three months by the time Thomas invited him to his lodgings on campus on the pretext of studying for their shared Greek class.

Albert was opinionated and, frankly, rather spoilt, but something in the timbre of his voice and his unruly hair, something about the quickness of his brown eyes and the certain grip of his firm hands, sent Thomas' heart leaping into his throat. There was a t _exture_ about him that Thomas wanted to sink his fingers into. Albert excelled in the study of science and language, less so where it came to philosophy. His teeth were sharp, and Thomas wanted to cut his tongue on them.

They did indeed only study on that first day; for Thomas could be quick, but he didn't want to be quick this time. He wanted to be _sure_.

He watched Albert pick a sweet from the paper bag on Thomas' desk - a gift sent by his mother -, watched it held between pensive lips before a fingertip nudged it into the dark wet warmth beyond. Thomas had to avert his eyes hastily.

It took seven more weeks until Thomas was love-wretched and sure enough to grab Albert by one of his endearingly large ears and allow his tongue to follow where he thought he could still taste boiled sugar.

Those long-fingered hands were shaking as they tore at Thomas' buttons, and Thomas laughed incredulously into Albert's mouth at the impatience and obvious inexperience with which his fellow student sought to undress him.

It turned out that Albert had entertained the thought of Thomas for at least as long. He let as much be coaxed out of him amidst panted breaths and half-stifled moans. His eyes met Thomas' only once before glancing quickly away, as Thomas stared into him with wild abandon and babbled and poked and prodded to draw from him admissions of how he had sat in class, driven to distraction by thoughts of Thomas; confessions of how he had lain awake at night pawing at himself under his suffocating sheets. Thomas wanted to know it all, felt his heart swell at bringing forth these secrets and made sure to repay each revelation with one of his own. Albert swore and squirmed and shivered while Thomas let him know just how he liked to touch himself, whom he thought about - Albertalbert _albert_ \- and what wondrous things Albert was doing to him right now.

Having lain with Thomas in the shadowed afternoon heat, Albert went perfectly still after spending, and was gripped by shaking terrors once Thomas, gasping foolish love-struck nonsense all the while, had come over Albert's stomach, brought to completion by his own hand. Albert would not bear Thomas' questioning touch again - he twisted away as though his skin crawled at it and pushed him off the bed, and near spat in Thomas' face to never speak of this to anyone.

Thomas wanted to weep at the sweetness of Albert's mouth that he had briefly known, and the bitterness that now twisted it.

He did weep, later, once Albert had left.

They did not study nor lie with each other again. Albert turned out to be as evasive as he was ashamed, and avoided Thomas for the rest of their school time.

The next time they spoke was five years later, an event that introduced Thomas to his future wife.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> next up: miranda and james ❤️ ❤️ ❤️
> 
> if you enjoyed the read, feed the starving author with a comment ❤️ and come fawn over thomas with me [on tumblr](http://squid-inspiration.tumblr.com/%22)!
> 
> **historical stuff**
> 
>  _la petite mort_ was already in use during this time period, but it actually didn't gain the meaning of "orgasm" until the late 19th century.
> 
> it's not clear what the etonian school uniform would have looked liked during thomas' time there, but it's been postulated that [this portrait](https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/7b/27/08/7b270832325b7b4038667b25352a94ba.jpg) of arthur atherley shows him in a senior uniform. honestly, just picture bb!thomas in that outfit - historical accuracy can take a back seat, i think.
> 
> i couldn't quite figure out the exact layout of eton college's various gardens, not to mention not all of them existed yet back then or hadn't been expanded to today's configuration. i have no idea whether the fellows' garden is actually a good place for midnight hook-ups. roll with me here, okay? (or if you know a better garden to secretly smooch sweethearts, lemme know, etonians!)
> 
> thomas also wouldn't have a dorm of his own, from what i gather the students all slept in one big hall. that set-up isn't very conductive to gay teenage romance drama, however, so i blithely ignored it and went with the modern-day set-up of separate rooms.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Miranda and James enter Thomas' life.
> 
> Also appearing: playing devil's advocate, wielding the sword of truth, the memory of an autumn encounter, a first lovers' spat, things that can neither be spoken nor left unsaid, and really bad metaphors for grey eyes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> special thanks to DreamingPagan, who helped me out when i obsessed, as usual, over the narrative flow.
> 
> i hope you guys are ready for miranda and james to enter the picture!

Albert brought his fiancée Cécile to the salon, held by an old classmate.

Thomas thought nothing personal of it - Eton was a long time ago and though it still pained him that Albert had so resolutely pushed away what seemed natural and good to Thomas, he had no tendency towards bitterness. He was glad to see Albert doing well for himself. Cécile was charming enough, young and glowing and clearly enamoured with Albert, gazing adoringly at him when she wasn't chatting with the dark-eyed woman she had brought. Thomas wished her well. He himself had gone through a string of fleeting affairs in the years following the debacle with Albert, but he had momentarily lost his appetite for romantic entanglements.

If Albert hadn't tried to puff himself up in front of a crowd, Thomas might have bitten his tongue and watched from afar. As it was, it wounded him to see someone he had been so infatuated with hold such objectionable views. Thomas could not resist the opportunity to engage Albert, at least once. That it was in so public a place made him think that surely Albert could not take it for anything but a platonic debate.

Albert had argued his position that to profess faith in both God and in scientific reason simultaneously must be the inclination of weak-minded men. Thomas, who felt rather personally addressed with this choice of subject, took a moment to compose himself before rising to answer.

He had thoroughly overestimated the prowess of his conversational partner, and ended up embarrassing Albert in front of their gathered friends and former schoolmates.

Albert's saving grace appeared in the form of one Miranda Barlow, Céline's dark-eyed companion, who raised her voice, clear as a bell and ringing as true, once it became obvious that her friend's fiancé was hopelessly outmatched.

She cleanly dissected Thomas' position and made a number of rather compelling arguments. It was evident she had not attended many such meetings before, but she spoke fearlessly and without softening her blows. There were writers she could have quoted to give credence to her position, but it appeared she had not read them or did not care for their assistance, and was supporting herself on naught but the strength of her own views.

Thomas was smitten.

Later, he sought Miranda out by the fireplace, two glasses in hand.

"I still don't agree with Albert's position." As Thomas handed her the wine their fingers brushed, light enough to be non-commital. "But I must say you almost swayed me, at least once."

"Oh, I don't agree with it either," Miranda replied and took a sip. "His talents lie elsewhere, though he fancies himself a philosopher once he's had a glass of brandy too many. But I could not simply stand by and see him made to look the fool so thoroughly in front of his fiancée, who is the niece of an old school friend."

Thomas raised his brows at her, at the colour in her cheeks and the mirth in her eyes - the expression of someone who happily twisted her mind around to find new ways of arguing. Who would play pretend to chase the thrill of intellectual discomfort.

"You argued with me for the sake of arguing. A right devil's advocate!"

Miranda simply smiled.

Thomas smiled back.

\---

Miranda was the first and only person Thomas hurt by being too hesitant of touch.

She matched him blow for blow in wits, but eventually it became undeniable that there were certain things they would never be to each other, though they tried.

On their wedding night, after doing his utmost and still failing to live up to what should have been Miranda's due, Thomas whispered truths into her skin as gently as he could. He swore that it was not her fault and that were the heavens more merciful, he would be able to love her as a proper husband should. Miranda was miserable and quietly furious at the freshness of the revelation, but she reached for his hand as she wept, and knew that he spoke no lies.

Thomas held her close, and she him, and they rocked each other quietly to sleep, co-conspirators whose best-laid plans were foiled by circumstances beyond their control.

It took them a fair amount of misunderstandings to arrange themselves. Late nights sharing drinks by the fireplace and careful, blind fumbling towards balance.

"You've never bedded anyone before me?" Thomas asked and Miranda reached out to right his glass, preventing the wine from spilling all over his breeches.

"Not for lack of desire, certainly. It's not generally encouraged in girls of good birth to go rolling in the hay with every last bright-eyed lad we fancy. No matter how nice a pair of shoulders he has." She sighed wistfully, and laughed when Thomas echoed the sound. "You have, I suppose? Been with men?"

"More than I should care to admit."

"Not that it helped you more than my chastity helped me, when it counted." Thomas felt his face heating, and Miranda pressed a hand to her forehead. "Oh, Thomas, no - I didn't mean that. I'm sorry."

He shook his head. "I can't blame you. I should have spoken to you earlier. Not only did I fail to live up to my marital duties, I brought to bed with me the ghost of an entire entourage of former lovers, and forced you to confront that on your wedding night."

Miranda was quiet for a moment. She took the glass from his hand and took a long, slow sip. Then she propped her elbow on the back of the settee, chin in hand.

"Tell me about them."

"About the men I've known?"

"About the men you've fucked."

Miranda's voice was calm as a winter sunrise and Thomas felt a quiet thrill at how brazenly she refused to look away, refused to mumble or whisper or stutter while speaking of her husband fucking other men. God, if he could not love her the way he should, he did love her all the same, in a bone-deep, aching way.

Thomas swallowed, mind racing immediately to the intersection of Miranda and men he'd fucked.

"Well, there was Albert, for one."

Miranda paused, brows hovering half a-frown on her forehead, before realisation dawned.

"Not Cécile's Albert?"

"The very same." Thomas shook his head. "Actually, let's not speak of Albert. That was... Well. Maybe another time?"

"Maybe." Miranda rose and went to refill the glass before she resumed her place on the settee. "Tell me of one you were fond of. Tell me your favourite, aside from Albert."

Thomas thought for a moment.

"There was one boy at Eton, Nicholas. We were sweet with each other, but I couldn't find enough common ground to really love him, and his affections lay elsewhere. They were never returned. Sometimes there's no knowing if your advances will be welcome, and the risk can be too great to chance it. Oh, how he would stare at Francis, how he would sigh over everything he said, everything he did, Francis this, Francis that."

Thomas realised that a slow, tender smile was spreading across his face. He hadn't thought of Nicholas in a long time and it surprised him how warm the memory made him feel. He felt a sudden, aching sympathy towards Nicholas that his younger self had never quite achieved in the same way.

"I should add I didn't mind - I don't think he even noticed how obvious he was, and wasn't pleased when I pointed it out. We kept each other company. He had a crooked nose, got kicked in the face by his pony when he was a little boy, but I swear it made him look just a bit on the dashing side of plain. I loved kissing that silly beak of a nose. Tall as a beanpole too, and I hadn't hit my growth spurt yet. He loved resting his chin on my head. Lovely dark locks, and his hands were always warm."

Thomas paused a moment, allowing himself to reminisce before going on.

"He wrote poetry, you know. Quite well, actually." Thomas rose to fetch a volume, bound in dark blue leather, from the shelf. "Published a number of collections."

"The author is Victor A. Poplace," Miranda observed, opening the book. "A pseudonym? How do you know it's him?"

Thomas smiled. "Because I recognised some of the writing. And it took me a while to notice, but it's in the name too." Miranda looked down at the spine of the book, frowning. "I'll give you a small hint.  _Nicholas_ derives from Ancient Greek, and roughly translates to  _triumph of the people."_

"Oh." She smiled. "Victor for victory - and I assume Poplace is just a play on  _populace?_  Clever. What does the A stand for?"

"That I don't know. Maybe a middle name?"

"I see." Miranda leafed through the book, stopping occasionally to read a poem in full. Thomas watched her read one of his reluctant favourites,  _Forest pools._  "These are very melancholy. Is he still pining after this Francis of his?"

"Francis married two years ago. What that says about his intimate affairs, I couldn't guess - not necessarily much. But I never knew him to be, well, like Nicholas and me. Nicholas and I fell out when I refused to let him be wretched over Francis in peace. Has barely spoken to me since, he's a very private person and spends most of his time out of London at the family estate. Doesn't attend a lot of social events. I don't know about his attachments these days."

"I see," Miranda repeated. She contemplated the book a moment longer. "You know, I was deeply upset when things... revealed themselves, during our wedding night. I'm sure you noticed. And if I'm being honest, I still am, sometimes."

"Miranda -"

She raised a hand and Thomas fell silent again.

"You told me you preferred the company of men. And I accepted the fact, but until now I suppose I never  _understood._  You've never told me names, to tell me of a boy's crooked nose that you loved to kiss. I never knew what to think except of faceless, nameless men you've taken to bed and done things with that would warrant a hanging, should anyone find out. I've never seen you smile like that, thinking on a past lover. I feel now that you've been trying to spare me hurt by withholding these things. I should have asked." Miranda's fingers brushed over a double page,  _Masquerade_ and _The Lodger._  "And I've never read poetry like this, that expresses so urgently the need for our minds to widen, to accomodate so human a need."

She paused, obviously not done yet. Thomas let her be and watched as she resolutely emptied the wine glass.

"I have never met this Nicholas of yours, but my heart breaks for him when I read how he yearns to show even the most sincere and pure-hearted of affections to his Francis, and cannot. And I think, why does it take this tenderest of loves to make me see that it is good and true, when I freely admit to wanting women and men to engage more freely in affairs, purely for the shared pleasure of it? I feel as if I have been unjust, Thomas." She indicated the book. "I was hurt, and feeling unloved, but I needed time to understand just how unloved  _you_  must have felt, must be feeling, not by one man, but by all the world. Thank you for showing me."

Thomas sat, stunned, and twisted his wedding ring around his finger. Finally, he said, "Thank you for asking. And for listening." They looked at each other a long moment before he gathered the words. "I want you to be happy, Miranda. If you see a man that enchants you, tell me about it. Do as you please and let me know that you are pleased."

"Are you telling me to pursue men outside our sacred marriage, husband?"

For a moment Thomas feared that he had gone too far, had stuck his fingers into a wound again. But Miranda's eyes were dark and glinting in the firelight, and he nodded.

"Then I want you to do the same, Thomas. Tell me about the beak-nosed, broad-shouldered, love-sick men you fancy, and don't hesitate to tell me when they fancy you in return. Be free with me."

Miranda ran her fingers absently over the spine of the book, and in that moment, Thomas felt that touch more intimately than any they had shared in their marriage bed. He took her other hand and kissed it. Leant closer to kiss the taste of dark wine out of her mouth, without urgency or carnal intent behind it. Miranda accepted it, let him pull away again, and held the book out to him.

"Read to me."

"Which one?"

"One addressed from a beanpole boy to his Francis."

They finished the bottle before they ran out of poems.

\---

_Two months after Nicholas had walked out on him, before Albert caught his attention, Thomas met Nicholas by chance on a walk. Nicholas' family was visiting an acquaintance at the estate bordering on one of the Hamiltons' properties where Alfred Hamilton had taken his family for a country sojourn._

_Thomas was out strolling with two of the hounds when he spotted a familiar, dark-haired figure in the late autumn dusk. Never one to leave a thing undisturbed, Thomas fell into step beside him. The dogs licked Nicholas' hands eagerly, and Thomas remembered how blood-hot those fingers had felt in his mouth._

_Nicholas' eyes were puffy and red, and he refused to say why. Thomas, unable to control himself as ever, asked after Francis and received only a warning glare in return. Thomas took his hand and led him on an aimless amble around the dense, dark woods. The dogs darted in and out of sight, disappearing into the dark underbrush and reemerging._

_He made Nicholas trade verses back and forth with him. Thomas loved the written word and could recite beautifully, could write philosophical musings and persuasive arguments of the greatest eloquence - but there was no denying he was a poor poet. Nicholas shared his acute memory for lines and writers, but his compositions had actual merit. Thomas tried to offer critique anyway._

_"Francis' eyes aren't blue like forest pools," he said. "They're more grey, like a belt buckle that's gone a bit dull. Or a pigeon feather."_

_"I never said it's about Francis. It's about a distant lover."_

_"Mmh, of course."_

_"Thomas, I swear -"_

_"So, how does it go on, this poem of your entirely unrelated, distant lover?"_

_Every once in a while one would push the other against a tree and they would press together without serious purpose, would mouth along the chilly stretches of skin above their scarves, and share heat in the dark. Thomas wasn't sure how much time had gone past when Nicholas rubbed his ear between thumb and forefinger, a touch hot as leftover embers on Thomas' chilled skin._

_"Why can't this be enough, Thomas? Something just like this. Something I can have. Why can't I be any good at loving you? Why can't you be easier to love?"_

_Thomas' heart sank. Nicholas had never spoken of anything like love with regards to whatever it was they shared. For him to come this close to confessing whatever feelings were broiling beneath the quiet surface must mean serious agitation. Thomas didn't fool himself into believing that those feelings were actually meant for him._

_"I don't know if it's meant to be easy," Thomas said finally. "Maybe I'm not good at being loved and you're not good at loving. You certainly have poor aim." Nicholas huffed a laugh, and chased the clouds of his breath with his eyes. "And to be quite honest, I don't think we're meant to fit together, the two of us." Nicholas shot him a sullen look, but he reached for Thomas' hand anyway. Thomas gave a gentle tug, his own cool fingers enveloped in Nicholas' hot palm. "Come, let's get you somewhere warm. You're freezing."_

_Nicholas didn't protest at this obvious fabrication. Unlike Thomas, he had never minded pretending for comfort's sake._

\---

Thomas and Miranda learnt.

The truth that had lain like a double-edged blade between their bodies on their wedding night became a weapon they wielded together, hands joined and fingers entwined around the hilt to cut down what lies might have stood between them.

\---

When Miranda began bedding James, she would show Thomas the occasional resulting bruise.

"He's strong as an ox, but so very concerned with using it unless you let him know it's welcome." Miranda smiled over her shoulder at Thomas. They were undressing for bed. "I dare say he'd be able to pick  _you_  up, love."

Thomas made a strangled noise in his throat.

"Come here." Miranda showed him a set of bluish marks on her hip. "I rode him today, and when he was about to spend, he grabbed me, right here."

She let Thomas try and fit his own hand to the imprint of James'.

\---

Sometimes Thomas thought that surely he should try harder to be tender with James.

The lieutenant would likely have reacted with offence had Thomas put it in any way like that, but in the privacy of his mind, that's how Thomas thought about it. That's what seemed like it should have been the prudent choice, given his track record of estranged lovers - and the word  _lover_  was still a cause of wistful, sleepless nights where James was concerned.

It was not easy, given that James gave as good as he got, starting from their first meeting. Thomas was delighted at the ease and dry wit with which James parried every attack thrown his way.

It quite went to his head, frankly, and it was often only after James had left for the day that Thomas realised how ruthless he was with the lieutenant, and how it never seemed to be enough. Not enough to turn his liaison away, or elicit more than an equally blunt response, and certainly not enough to satisfy Thomas' need to dig deeper and prod harder and receive the same treatment in return.

The first time Thomas took James to bed, a few days after the fateful dinner with Alfred Hamilton, their touches were filled with slow, disbelieving wonder. Thomas had been curious what James would be like, had wondered if he would see more of that carefully managed forcefulness that always seemed to be simmering beneath the lieutenant's skin. James instead touched him so sweetly Thomas wanted to weep.

It was a week later that Thomas coaxed James into being more adventurous. It turned out that James enjoyed taking what he liked as much as Thomas did, and when they didn't feel like sweet, slow love-making they put marks on each other where no one could see. On one memorable occasion, James stuffed the end of Thomas' cravat into his helplessly babbling mouth, which Thomas accepted with surprised pleasure. Before five minutes had passed, however, James stopped sucking him to tug the length of linen from Thomas' mouth again.

"It's not the same if you're not talking," he said simply and Thomas, despite the encouragement, failed to say anything in the face of those words. Overwhelmed, he kissed James and then guided his head back down to Thomas' groin. James grinned up at him and resumed his ministrations. Before long words came pouring forth again.

No man, Thomas thought, had any right to look this smug with a cock stuffed in his mouth.

\---

It was only once they had been sharing a bed for a few weeks that Thomas began to discover the truly untouchable spaces beneath the surface.

James was restless one evening, and remained so even once they had retired to Thomas' bedroom.

"What's wrong?" James panted distractedly when Thomas resurfaced from beneath the blankets, lips swollen and hair sticking every which way. Thomas adored pleasuring James with his mouth; loved James' bitten-off little grunts and snuffles and sucked-in breaths when Thomas swallowed him all the way down. (Thomas was rather proud of that skill.) Those noises were conspicuously absent tonight.

Thomas moved up the bed to lie beside James. He had to reach out and clasp James' hand to still its uneasy fidgeting.

"That's what I should be asking you. Your mind is elsewhere entirely. And I don't mean to flatter myself but I don't usually inspire boredom in the people I take to bed." James coloured and Thomas gently rubbed his thumb with his own. "Tell me what bothers you, my love."

James started out haltingly but his voice soon firmed up, as if determined to reach the end of his tale as quickly as dignity would permit. He relayed the news of a pair of Navy officers found guilty of sodomy. Thomas bit his cheek against the commentary yearning to spill out, restricted himself to vague sounds instead.

"One of them is set to hang while the other was merely flogged and discharged," James said eventually, and there was something in his tone that told Thomas they had reached the crux of the matter.

"And why was that?"

James frowned down at their joined hands. "They were officers of equal rank," he recounted. "But one of them was the son of an earl, while the other is the son of an ostler. And the common man was the one doing the sodomozing when they were caught. As you may imagine, the outrage was considerable. He's going to hang."

Silence fell. Their hands had gone entirely still, fidgeting and caresses both forgotten.

Eventually Thomas could not hold back his thoughts, the way he never could, and made his opinion of the situation known in the strongest possible terms. James' eyes stayed trained upon the far wall all throughout his outburst.

"All service to the empire aside," Thomas added to the tail end of his tirade, "those men do not deserve you, James. That entire institution does not deserve you. That society itself is entirely wrong on the subject of men like us is not new to either you or me. But to act as if one was even-handed and just with regards to birth - as if it were a problem solved, no matter how unsatisfactorily! What good is this hollow pretense at equal standing through promotion when incidents like this expose it for nothing but a bare-faced lie?"

What he had not expected was for James to leap from the bed at this.

"Thomas," James said, trembling with suppressed emotion. "You know you are the world to me, but for the love of God,  _shut your mouth_."

Thomas stared at him as if the words had been a physical blow. James' eyes widened - he had never spoken to Thomas in this manner and was clearly as startled by it as Thomas. He turned away to start pacing in distress, agitated hands wandering every which way, and ere long he began picking his uniform off the floor.

"I should go," he said under his breath, but he still did not dare to look Thomas in the face. His arousal had long fled.

The sight of James making to shrug on his rumpled shirt finally shook Thomas out of his stupor. He moved closer to the edge of the bed.

"James." His voice did not betray how shaky he felt. "This is unlike you."

"Is it?" James' head snapped up and his eyes caught Thomas'. Thomas was uncertain how to react in the face of such palpable distress and, yes, anger. "Tell me, is it truly? Or am I merely holding my tongue in your presence, controlling my common nature?"

Thomas did not know what to respond, and so he remained silent. His mind, however, was racing.

James swallowed heavily and looked down at the linen clasped in his hands.

"I did not mean to speak to you thus." The words were deliberately slow. "The moment I said it I wanted to beg your forgiveness." James halted, brows drawing further together, and Thomas stayed what response had been forming in his own mouth. "Yet half of me wanted to take your hand and ask forgiveness as your lover, and half - half was panicked at the consequences that a man like me should face addressing a lord in this manner. That half, the half that knows how the world works, urged me to grovel for clemency, even though neither groveling nor a weak-hearted wish for clemency is in my nature."

James twisted the fabric of his shirt in his hands.

"You know you need not fear this sort of thing from me," Thomas hastened to say and sat up straighter.

"From you, no," James conceded but his look had not softened. "But the world is not merely the two of us. I know you insist on the informal, on flaunting convention, and I'd be lying if I said I did not love that about you. But I cannot - whatever its faults, however much I disagree with it, I cannot bear to let this insult stand to the only institution that has accomodated me. Would you have me discard the only place in my life that allows me to rise at least this far? Over an ideological disagreement? You can afford those things, but I cannot. There is nowhere else I can command even this much respect."

"You are respected in my salons. When you speak, people listen, even lords of the highest rank."

James snorted. "They listen because I am your liaison and because listening to a low-born sailor makes them feel novel and transgressive. Make no mistake, even among my own peers I do not enjoy universal approval."

"You don't?"

James looked at him again, eyes dark. "Hardly. Thomas, I take pride in my accomplishments - I am an excellent tactician and captain, my battle prowess is considerable and I have earned the trust of a highly respected admiral who calls me son. Lacking both title and fortune these are the only things I can call mine, and that will ever allow me to rise above my station - no matter how hollow a pretense you call it."

Thomas was about to respond, but James shook his head decisively.

"Please," he said, and his voice was raw. "Do not make me speak more of this. I have said too much already. Leave me this ounce of comfort, however threadbare."

It pained Thomas to see James so obviously in knots over what he truly felt and wanted to do, what he thought he  _should,_ what he wished wasn't but  _was._ It pained Thomas to realise that he had finally discovered a place in his lover that was closed even to him - and the door was not locked, but held shut from the inside.

For the first time that he could remember, Thomas beat a retreat. He backed away from the hornet's nest.

"Of course," he said and his heart clenched at the way that James visibly deflated in unhappy relief. He looked at the clothes still in James' hands. "Will you come back to bed? Let me hold you."

James looked aggravated. "I don't need to be held, Thomas. I'm not a child."

Thomas decided that it was best not to risk further injuring his lover's pride, and to let James nurse this wound as he saw fit. Instead he merely moved over to his accustomed side of the bed - they had a  _routine_  in the way they shared a bed now, heaven help him - and threw back the blankets for James.

After carefully folding his uniform and placing it on a chair - the way it had been taken off him earlier had been rather hasty -, James climbed stiffly back into bed. Though he did not seek out the proffered embrace, he lay down facing Thomas.

Thomas exhaled softly as feather-light kisses were placed on each of his eyelids. By God, his knees turned to jelly instantly at the tenderness of it. Never had he been touched with more careful intent than by James, as if every last thought in his mind was concentrated on Thomas and nothing but Thomas in those moments.

They lay like two shipwrecks that had stranded on the same unfamiliar shore, and fell asleep without speaking.

In the morning their feet were entangled, and once they were both awake, James moved to lean over Thomas with obvious intent and slight hesitancy, clearly wondering if his advances were welcome after their altercation.

Thomas could perceive in the slow tenderness of James' touch and the bite of his kisses both the apology and the reprimand for last night, and which James could neither speak nor leave unsaid, one out of love and the other out of pride. Thomas accepted them both.

\---

Later, for no one reason he could name, he told James about having been beaten by his father over the ruined painting. No other lover had ever known - not because Thomas was particularly touchy on the subject, he always thought, but because it had simply never come up.

James was indignant and kept asking, asking, asking; still raw from the dinner table altercation with Alfred Hamilton, even after all these weeks. Thomas felt the questions like nails raked down the inside of his skin, and  _God_ , he had never felt as alive as in that moment, to be so intently taken apart for no reason other than to be  _known_.

He had to seal James' mouth with his own, as if to swallow the questions without them having to travel the space between them first, and descended on him as if to devour him whole.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this fic is close to my heart, and i'd rly love to get feedback. if you have thoughts (or praise!) _please_ don't hesitate to drop a comment ❤️
> 
> the next chapter will likely be up in ~2 weeks, as i'm moving countries etc.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Thomas is locked away.
> 
> Also appearing: not pleasure but necessity, a bite of lamb, half a man, five months of silence, black ink, enough hands for a healthy pair, and an arrival in chains.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this one's a bit longer - we're covering bethlem and georgia this time. hang in there, friends ❤️

"Do you remember that faithful old hound Sir Wilfred had at his country manor?" Miranda asked abruptly.

Thomas blinked. She merely arched a brow and placed a finger in her book without closing it.

"Yes. Why?"

"Because he'd sit around, ears a-twitch, every fibre of his being attuned to the sound of his master coming home. And before anyone else could hear it, the dog would sense his arrival and wait unmoving by the door until it inevitably opened and admitted Sir Wilfred. And you," Miranda failed to suppress a smile, "you remind me very much of that loyal creature, unable to read a full page for anticipation of our dear lieutenant's return."

Thomas wanted to protest, but he found that he had no good counter-argument.

When James did arrive, much later in the day, Thomas thought he looked terribly dashing with the beard. Although he was annoyed that Peter's presence prevented him leaping into James' arms, Thomas was also glad that it gave him a moment to compose himself before approaching his lover.

Miranda spent the evening with them in the library, reading and talking and touching, but she retired to bed eventually, with a jaunty tilt to her brow, and wished them a pleasant night.

The night wasn't pleasant as much as necessary. It felt more like a bone-deep compulsion than mere enjoyment, and although it was urgent, it wasn't raucous. It wasn't loud or hurried or rabid. There were no sounds of slapping flesh or filthy encouragements, because once they were undressed and in bed they did not let enough space between them to allow for either. Instead they held each other close and ground together as though to wear away the skin between them and join their bones into one continuous thing through force of will alone.

It terrified Thomas, just a bit. It made him realise that despite starving for three months the full painful extent of his hunger was not fully understood until the moment that he was allowed to feast.

In the morning James put himself to rights - he had to take care of various matters before seeing Admiral Hennessey after lunch.

"My landlady thinks I'm an incorrigible skirt chaser," he said and caught Thomas' disbelieving eyes in the mirror as he tied his cravat. "Because I don't sleep all that much in my own bed."

Thomas leant against the bedpost, not bothering to contain his laughter. He crooked a finger at James. James followed obediently and Thomas took his hand to suck a finger into his mouth. James groaned, a deep rumbling sound that shot straight to Thomas' groin. Thomas made no secret of how much he enjoyed James in his mouth; any part of him, really. He eyed James' breeches speculatively.

"I have things to do," James said through his teeth. Thomas released his finger.

"So do I. I don't believe we worked off anywhere near three months of frustration." Thomas leant back in and relaxed his jaw for a moment, inviting James to thrust his finger gently in and out of his slack mouth. Then Thomas nipped at the joint and pulled off. "We'll continue when you're back."

\---

They came for Thomas while he was at the table with Miranda.

The human mind, Thomas knew, was a curious thing. In moments of great upset it would sometimes pick the unlikeliest things to focus on.

Unsurprisingly, he would always remember rising to his feet when the door flew open, demanding to know what was going on when the men strode into the room. Miranda's distress and the way he had to beg for her to stay put, because her expression made him afraid she was going to stab someone with a fork, and then it would have been two of them in trouble.

When it became clear where he was being taken, and why, Thomas beseeched Miranda to stay with James.

"Promise me!“ He struggled against the hands pulling him towards the door. Thomas felt grim satisfaction that it needed three to restrain him. „You have to take care of each other, whatever happens, I need to know you'll be alright –“

Miranda was screaming for the men to let her husband go, but one of them clamped a soaked handkerchief over Thomas' mouth and nose, and as he inhaled his strength left him, like water draining out of a punctured skin.

What he later remembered with strange sharpness was his earnest concern about the bite of lamb he had been eating, dropped to the floor when the doors had crashed open. That Miranda would have to order the servants to clear it away with the rest of the uneaten meal and the dishes.

Waste of a dead thing, and his teeth marks still in it.

\---

Thomas' mother came to see him a month after he had been rushed off to Bethlem. She startled when she saw her newly-bald son – they had shaved Thomas' hair to prevent lice. Florence Hamilton looked harrowed and kept glancing over her shoulder as if to ascertain her husband wasn't standing behind her.

"Alfred will change his mind." She patted Thomas' hand with as much reassurance as she could evidently muster. "He just needs to calm down."

 _"Calm down?"_ Thomas pulled his hand away abruptly. "He had me committed to Bethlem Hospital, Mother. He had my wife and lover exiled."

Florence Hamilton's eyes crinkled as she squeezed them shut - he knew his did the same, he had her eyes - and turned her face aside.

"I so wish you wouldn't use that word."

It took Thomas a full three seconds to follow. An empty stomach slowed the mind, as he could attest to now.

"I will call him my lover and a thousand other things."

"Please, dear - for your mother. Have some mercy."

Thomas' teeth ached from how hard he pressed them together, eyes fixed unmovingly on the ground.

"What happened to my brave little man?" Florence Hamilton didn't move closer, but she twisted to face him more fully. "Thomas, I know you have your... eccentricities. I have always been understanding. I have never loved you less for it. But this once - please, just this once, don't be contrary. I don't know what this... this sailor has been whispering to you, and I will admit that your father has always been overly harsh with you, but just this once, try to see it from his perspective. He only meant to protect you."

Thomas grew aware that he was shaking; his teeth felt about to rattle out of his very skull with it.

"I think you should go," he said.

His mother should have been more reluctant to get up and walk to the door, he thought resentfully.

Florence Hamilton paused in the doorway.

"I want you to come home, Thomas." He didn't look up but he could feel her eyes on him, and he knew that she meant it. God, like every other time, she meant it with all her heart. He had stopped long ago looking to her for protection, moved to pity once he realised her own miserable situation, but a small ember of betrayal had never stopped burning. "Do as the doctors say. Let them help you, and come back home."

"It doesn't matter whether I play along with this charade at healing they practice here," Thomas said bitterly. "Father doesn't want me to _heal_. He wants me out of the way because my ideas look too much like Jacobinism and treason to be tolerated out in the open."

"But _I_ want you to heal," his mother said softly. "I miss you, Thomas."

Thomas took so long to reply that she had almost drawn the door shut behind her by the time he spoke.

"I miss James. I miss his quick wit, his refusal to let me fall headfirst into every hare-brained scheme that comes into my head. I miss the respect with which he treats Miranda when all of London is gagging for new gossip to humiliate her. And I miss how he looks hazy and love-drunk in the morning, after we've fallen asleep reading to each other and the corner of the book has left its imprint on his cheek. I miss knowing his devotion to me in every last look, word and touch."

Thomas finally glanced at his mother, her knuckles white on the door.

"Heal me of this, and you'll never have your son back. You'll have half a man, and less than that. You'll have an empty shell."

\---

Thomas could count his own ribs by the time the seasons turned for the first time when he was in Bethlem.

He wasn't being starved, not by way of denying him food, but the purgatives they forced down his throat made him bring up everything he ate. He would wash his mouth desperately, thinking that one's teeth shouldn't have a taste of their own, but it often felt as if the bile and vomit clung to them. He fought back at first. Later he took the purgatives without complaint, too wrung-out to resist anymore, too revolted by fingers being stuck in his mouth to force him to open up.

Before long, after losing one tooth to a blow that knocked his head into the corner of his cot, Thomas learned not to talk back to the guards. He did for a while, tried striking up a conversation with his wardens to relieve his mind at least somewhat of monotony. He would muse idly upon philosophical problems, tried to relate the issue at hand to experiences the men themselves might encounter in their daily lives. They rarely took it well.

It was only once that a guard tried to force himself on Thomas. It happened early on, when he still had all his teeth and a certain amount of strength, and it was these that allowed Thomas to fight back long and hard enough to deter his would-be violator, who decided that Thomas was too much bother to be worth the effort. Thomas tried not to think about whether his attacker found someone easier to torment in a different cell. The guard disappeared a week later; for what reasons, Thomas couldn't guess. Perhaps he had found employment with better wages elsewhere. Thomas wasn't sure he believed that any moral comeuppance had visited the man.

A few months later, Thomas would have lacked the strength to defend himself like that again. By sheer luck no one tried to lay a hand on him a second time, at least not in a way other than the occasional beating. Thomas felt defeat all the same, for knowing that the outcome of another attempt seemed so certain.

The worst, Thomas thought, were the visitors. How they would stroll along the cells and gasp in delighted horror at the wretches on display.

There was a spider that lived in the corner of the room furthest from the door. Thomas called her Arachne and wished that he could be small and inconspicuous like her, to sit unseen in a corner and be left alone by prying eyes. He became rather invested in the spinning and repair of her web and congratulated her on each caught insect. One day she was gone from her corner longer than usual. It was when he went to look at the web to investigate that he found her, lying on her back with all eight legs curled up tightly.

"I suppose that's one way of never being stared at again," he said.

But there was no way for him to escape the scrutiny. The eyes. The eagerness to observe his misery and loneliness. He sat hunched in the space between his cot and the wall and felt the stares peel the skin from him, in slow curling strips, like wet wood shavings.

It was a good thing he had no hair, Thomas thought dispassionately. He would have ripped it out.

\---

He learnt not to speak James' name out loud, for it brought punishment in form of beatings, isolation or extra treatments.

"If you can still speak of this James so blithely, I must assume that you have a long way to go yet towards being cured of your sickness," the doctor said after ordering another ice bath later in the day. Thomas' blood was running, slick and soft and sick, into the bowl held to his elbow. Bloodletting to balance his humours. "You must move on, Thomas. Can you do that for me? Until you move on, you can never heal, no matter how long you stay here."

It was true. Thomas never did heal during all his time in Bethlem.

He pushed his thoughts of James deep, along with thoughts of Miranda, because thinking of them without him hurt. He had always relished discomfort for the growth it spurred in people, pain for the way it indicated places untouched and in need of attention. Now, all his life was pain, and he could no longer enjoy the easy transgressions that had been a spice to enliven his comfortable life, and were now his daily bread.

 _Pain_. The French word for bread. He entertained himself with that for a few days, clinging to the morbid little joke until all amusement had been sucked from it, like a mouthful of food that had been chewed for too long.

As long as he could still occasionally bring the memory of Miranda and James to the surface to rescue them from obscurity, he could manage.

He could manage.

\---

Thomas did not see a familiar face until his release from Bethlem, with one notable exception.

After the incident, he resisted the urge to paw at his torn-up shins. He curled up in the gap between his cot and the wall, tucked his face behind his trembling knees and tried not to think of what had happened. Tried not to think about the way that shame had somehow found a way to hurt him after all. Even if it was someone else's.

\---

The next time he heard from his mother was in a letter informing him of his father's death, seven years later.

It was delivered by Peter Ashe.

"Georgia?" Thomas repeated and straightened up a little, though he did not rise from his bed.

Between his empty stomach and surprise at seeing a familiar face after seven years' time, the words made no sense to him. It didn't help that he had been wondering for the first year or so whether Peter was ever going to visit him - Peter had been the only one to know of him and James, and had always guarded their secret well. Over time, Thomas' inquisitive instinct had dulled to merely wondering if Alfred Hamilton had done something to keep him away.

"A day's ride inland from the coast, in fact," Peter clarified. He stood just inside Thomas' cell, visibly disinclined to touch anything in it. Had it been possible, Thomas was certain he would have preferred to leave space between his costly shoes and the grimy floor. "The owner of the place has taken it upon himself to do well by the outcasts of society, and to give them a refuge."

"By putting them to work?"

"Well, now." Peter made a sound that was either a cough or a nervous laugh. "A man needs to have some sort of occupation. And with your father passed away, I am finally free to act and help you. Your mother asked me to, in fact."

Thomas bit at his nail bed, eyes fixed rigidly upon a brick in the far wall.

"Why doesn't she just have me released entirely?" he asked tonelessly.

Peter had no satisfactory answer, just vague nothings of wills and concerns and public opinion and other nonsense, and eventually just spread his hands in wordless capitulation.

"I will accompany you to Georgia," he said instead. "It's a long voyage, and I want to make sure everything goes well."

Thomas glanced up at him. "It's a voyage of seven weeks, Peter. That's a long way to travel to oversee a mere sick-of-mind sodomite being sold into forced labour."

Peter's mouth twitched into a forced smile, obviously uncertain how to take Thomas' comment. "Well, I also have business to take care of. I will be staying quite a while, in fact - I can come visit you regularly and see that you're treated well, and bring you news."

There was something strange about Peter's voice. Thomas was not as good at reading people as Miranda – oh, how he ached just to think her name! –, but he had always been a quick study.

"What sort of business?" he asked warily. Peter couldn't quite look at him and Thomas sat up straighter. "What sort of business, Peter?"

After a moment's hesitation, Peter told him about his new governorship, about how he intended to carry forth Thomas' mission of treating the New World as a sacred opportunity, that Georgia was a place where slavery was not accepted the way it was elsewhere, what he intended to accomplish -

Thomas silenced him with a raised hand. His mind was racing, and the sensation was overwhelming after seven years of growing weaker and meeker.

"That governorship was promised to someone else," he said slowly. "My father had meant to arrange for the lord of Magstonwell's eldest son to..."

He watched Peter watching him realise, and knew in the mirror of Peter's face that the terrible conclusion he was drawing was right.

Thomas could not remember the last time he had raised his voice. It sounded stiff with disuse.

"Did anything I spoke about ever get through to you? Did you ever care? Did the plight of the cast-aside, the cruelty of the ruling, the injustice of a world that prefers to hand thieves nooses rather than second chances... did those ever touch you at all?"

"Thomas -"

"No, you know what, Peter? Please don't answer. I don't want to know. I don't want to know if you ever saw reason and goodness and then willfully cast them aside, or if you've been in my father's pocket this whole time." Thomas' hands were curled into the folds of his thin blanket. He feared what he might do should he let go. "I don't want your opinion on what I've been trying to do, and most of all I don't want your opinion on my wife or lover. I don't want to know if you saw love and betrayed it for a bribe, or if you were secretly disgusted and merely biding your time."

"Your father is a powerful man, Thomas," Peter began, and jerked back when Thomas leapt to his feet. Thomas' knees almost buckled. He had not moved this fast in years and he had been vomiting his guts out just an hour ago, but there was a silent roaring inside him that carried him almost physically.

"My father is _dead!_ " he shouted, lunging towards his erstwhile friend. He didn't even know if he wanted to hurt Peter, he just needed to _reach_ him, to force him to somehow -

Peter escaped beyond the door and hastily slammed it behind him, trapping Thomas' wrist in the process. Thomas howled and stumbled back, while Peter quickly shut the door. The lock clicked, but Thomas, beyond even the reach of pain, stretched his uninjured left hand as far past the bars as he could, clawing uselessly at the air.

"You have to let me out," he begged. It wasn't the first time he had begged, not with the years that lay behind him now, but the sound of his own pleading only incensed him more. "It's in your power, Peter - let me out, so I can find James, and Miranda -"

Peter was pressed back against the opposite wall, although he could have stood much closer and still been beyond Thomas' reach.

"Please, Thomas," he implored, trying to sound soothing. Thomas felt each word like cold water splashing the inside of his shivering, overheated skin. "Please calm down, if you only let me explain to you in full - trust me, this arrangement will help -"

"It will help _you!_ It will soothe your conscience while I will remain locked away, and James and Miranda off God knows where, probably thinking me dead, and James, my James -"

"It was _never_ about _James!"_ Peter roared and for a moment Thomas was struck silent. "God, if only you had known where to stop, Thomas, if only you could have had some _sense!_ You should have listened to your James while he still had the good sense to restrain your outlandish ideas!"

"Keep his name out of your mouth! You don't deserve to even speak his name, or Miranda's, you sniveling spit-licking traitorous coward! Recognise this chance you have been given to redeem yourself, to at least try and make amends for your sins - if only I was free to find them and -"

_"They're dead, Thomas!"_

Curiously enough, while Peter finally called for the guards, it didn't feel as if Thomas' heart had been ripped out, left to bleed. Instead it had been severed with a hot blade, cauterising the wound and sealing anything that should have come spilling out.

Later, Thomas couldn't remember whether he had been moved to a more isolated cell, or been shackled to restrain him, or made to undergo some horrid treatment. Nothing at all might have happened. He might have sat down and stared at the wall in silence.

He remembered nothing.

\---

Thomas did not speak for five months.

Daylight gave away the wide, flat stretch of his mind as lacking anything worth saying.

At night he ground his unformed, useless words to bone meal between his teeth.

\---

As if by miracle, the voyage to Savannah made Thomas gain weight, which was not the usual case as he had gleaned from James' descriptions of seafaring cuisine. He was still sick regularly, from the ceaseless rolling of the ocean below the ship, but there was no method behind it, no regimen that demanded he empty himself of all food, _now_ , and again tomorrow, and after that. He did not gain much, but locked below decks with nothing to do, Thomas would often lie on his back in his hammock and squeeze ceaselessly at his stomach, his chest, his thighs, feeling for every new bit of soft, malleable flesh.

Although Peter traveled to Georgia on the same ship, Thomas hardly saw him. Thomas had no freedom of movement, except for the occasional excursion above deck, during which he was kept away from the gunwale.

"Wouldn't want you hurling yourself into the sea, my lord," the sailor guarding him said in a voice entirely too friendly, too understanding of this grief-struck, cuckolded nobleman. Thomas could practically hear his thoughts - not born to title or wealth, but at least he was not a Bedlamite.

Thomas did not respond, merely inhaled the salty air deeply. He imagined the same breath of air having been breathed by James before, during his time at sea. He wished the salt would burn in his lungs, but he felt nothing.

At first he could hardly stand to look at the ocean. His eyes had grown so accustomed to the meagre spaces of Bethlem, wall to wall, and he felt the strain of adjusting to openness, to real distance. His very eyeballs hurt, and the sun was too bright, the colours too vivid. For the first days, he caught quick glimpses and let his gaze drop back to the greyish brown of the deck, resting. 

The journey took almost two months. It felt like forever. Thomas had accepted the forever of Bethlem, and now here he was, on a sea voyage surrounded by skies that didn't want to end, suspended in limbo before the next forever: that of a life toiling until he died for this empire that didn't want him.

Considering that he was not even fourty years of age, Thomas felt as though had experienced a lot of eternities.

Peter tried speaking to him only once, up on deck. Thomas refused to answer him, and could see how his silence galled Peter. No more attempts were made.

The dizzying arch of the sky as it vaulted high above, from horizon to horizon, had already lost its novelty by the time they reached Savannah after seven and a half weeks at sea. He barely felt freer for seeing it.

The last time Thomas saw Peter was in Oglethorpe's office, handing over a heavy purse in exchange for Thomas' continued imprisonment.

\---

Despite the changes to his body, the first weeks at the plantation were brutal. They never ceased to be, truth to be told. Thomas did not manage to work an entire day during his first three weeks. After two hours he would be drenched in sweat, hoes and shovels falling from his shaking hands as he gulped for breath. He would be administered a few blows with the omnipresent cudgels for the sake of appearances, rules were rules after all and refusing to finish the day's work counted as a transgression, but the overseers sent him to his bunk after that. Some of them even put a steadying hand on his elbow, or attempted to do so – he would not bear the touch.

As Thomas lay under his thin blanket at night, he would run his callused hands over his body, dipping his fingertips into every groove. There were new swells everyday, the aftermath of sore muscles and food that was not forced out of his body by purgatives or a temperamental ocean.

He hurt all over, but he could feel himself grow harder, sturdier by the day. Though he had never been waifish, he was engaged in physical labour such as this for the first time in his life, and the pain of his muscles as they stretched and bunched up became, bizarrely, the first kind of reluctant pleasure he had felt in a long time.

His work days stretched to three hours, then four, then six, until finally he worked as much as every other inmate.

The work itself was back-breaking, but what Thomas found unberable was the overseers. He had spent seven years under constant observation, either by wardens or as an attraction for visitors to ogle and shout at. The blue skies stretched wide above Thomas, there were no chains on his wrists as he worked, but the eyes of his keepers kept him pinned all the same. His skin crawled at it and he developed a habit of scratching at his forearms when it grew too much. Not enough to bleed or scar, but enough to leave red streaks for a while.

He dreamed of fingers prying his mouth open.

In the mornings, Thomas woke with a jaw stiff and painful from grinding his teeth all night.

\---

Oliver arrived at the plantation several weeks after Thomas did.

Their cots were next to each other due to the close timing of their arrivals, and Oliver sat beside him at meals, stayed near whenever possible. Thomas still refused to speak. Oliver never tried to make him. He just seemed strangely pleased to know Thomas nearby for some reason.

Even in his grief, Thomas had always lived right beneath his own skin, in need of contact. As the seeds they sowed began to break from the ground as bright green shoots, soft and curled, he felt himself unfurl as well, just a bit. He still couldn't make himself speak, didn't know what to say, but Oliver's company was the first thing he felt he could enjoy in a long time, however weakly.

Oliver requested a book to write in. Oglethorpe could seemingly reconcile the labours of a sugar cane plantation foisted upon sold men and his own aspirations for moral justice, and seemed happy to supply Oliver with the means of recording his thoughts, of pondering important things.

In the evenings, Thomas would watch Oliver write. Upside down. He wanted to watch the progress, the steady growth of tangled lines of ink across virgin paper, to hear the soft scratch of the pen. He didn't want to know the words.

Aware of Thomas' attention, Oliver eventually flipped to a new page, dipped the pen in the ink well and held it out to Thomas.

„Whatever you like,“ he said.

Thomas took book and pen, held them for a long time, just looking. The pen felt awkward in his right hand, clumsy as it had become after Peter had slammed the door on the wrist. He shifted the pen to his left hand, and felt a sudden surge of something he could only call _me._

He had no words he could think to say at that moment. No pictures came to mind.

He settled on his name, like a child first learning to write. The letters were jagged and ungainly and after the first syllable he gave up on words and let the pen run where it would, let the biting, sharp tip catch on the paper. He dipped it again into the ink, inhaled, and covered the entire page in furious zig-zagging lines and drips of black ink. The surface of the page dissolved, inch by inch, into wet, black wounds whose fibres caught on the pen. It spilled out of him uncontrollably, as if the ink was another purgative that brought his insides out of him.

Thomas was drenched in sweat by the time the page was soaked. Oliver waited a minute longer and then carefully pried both pen and book from Thomas' hands. Their fingers came away stained black. Thomas stayed Oliver's hand a moment, uncertain what he intended with the gesture, and let go almost immediately. He left fingerprints on Oliver's wrist.

\---

Where the fieldwork offered at least the superficial pleasure of seeing the sky and feeling the wind, processing the cut cane harboured not even those threadbare pretensions at enjoyment. Working near the boilers made Thomas' skin burn until he thought the fluid in his eyes would evaporate and leave them shrivelled. The first time a droplet of boiling sugar hit his skin he realised how little he had understood of pain before. The viscous liquid refused to be shaken off and left a bare patch behind when he finally managed to remove the lump, ripping follicles with it. The red welts of these burns never completely faded.

The mills had to be fed with the cut cane, grinding away like hungry beasts demanding tribute.

One day it was Oliver's turn, Thomas by his side with a blade. The men tending the mills were always paired with a second worker to stand beside them with a machete, in case a finger got caught in the grinding apparatus. During those accidents, the only alternative to death was quick removal of the limb being pulled into the mill.

Afterwards, Thomas could not recall why Oliver's finger had gotten caught, what might have distracted him. Thomas remembered only the screaming, barely human in pitch. He had received fencing lessons in his youth, but those had been for sport, and the swords had been light, nimble things, not comparable to a machete. Even after learning to cut sugar cane tolerably well, he had never tried to actually cut through flesh and bone. The man working the mill on his other side had looked over, seen how terribly overwhelmed and underqualified Thomas was, and completed the terrible task swiftly.

„You've made a right mess of things,“ the overseer said later, when Thomas sat by Oliver's cot. „If you had just delivered that cut properly he might have lost only the hand. You're going to stay by his side until he's back on his feet. See that he eats. He throws up, you clean it. He shits himself, same thing.“

Thomas accepted the task without complaint. He stared down at Oliver's pale face, broad with strong cheekbones, homely rather than handsome, and cursed himself for a weakling. If James had been here, he would surely have known how to handle that blade properly. Thomas allowed himself a brief, painful moment of remembering James fondling the handle of his sword as he mulled over something or other. The slow rub of James' thumb over the ridges of the pommel's ornamentation had always been distracting to Thomas, who enjoyed that sort of touch on himself, and who took guilty pleasure in imagining James fighting faceless foes, all skill and brute force and honed muscle.

He wished, not for the first time, that he had some of that skill and brute force himself. Not inclined to violence by nature, Thomas wished he knew how to punch a man properly, how to wield a sword meant to sever. They were naught but idle fantasies and he could not make himself feel ashamed for them.

The thought of James sloshed low and unpleasant in his belly like swamp water, and Thomas pushed it away.

He stared, dazed, at the bloody fingerprints he had left on Oliver's face, and thought, _Not like this._

Oliver tossed and turned for two days before the fever broke. They had been given a small, stuffy room away from the main sleeping hall, so as not to disturb the other inmates. Thomas dressed and cleaned the wound, tried his best to get some food into Oliver, washed him when he soiled himself, dissolved more pages with black ink and prayed.

He hadn't prayed in years.

Oliver spoke as he burned. He would mumble and mutter away, and only sometimes could Thomas make out distinct words. He noticed a pattern, though. A name.

When Oliver finally emerged from his fever haze, he stared at what was left of his arm, squeezed his eyes shut briefly, and turned his head to look at Thomas in silence.

 _I'm sorry,_ Thomas wanted to say. And, _This is my fault._ And, _Forgive me._ And, _I'm glad you're awake._ And, _I was afraid for you._

What he said instead was, „Who is Alexander?“

Oliver's eyes widened. Then they crinkled into soft capitulation, though capitulation to what, Thomas couldn't quite make out. Sadness. Relief. Thomas thought it should have been anger.

„Only the reason I'm here.“ Oliver sighed, then inclined his head meaningfully „I know why _you're_ here. I overheard some of the things the guards say about you. What's your Alexander called?“

Given how long he had not spoken Thomas thought it should be more difficult, but the name came tumbling from his lips without hesitation.

„James,“ he said. „His name was James.“

„Was?“

Oliver shifted to reach out with his hale arm, forgot the raw wound of the other one, and half-collapsed off the bed. Thomas caught him and they sat, half-crumpled, half-alive, and held each other as they allowed the tears to come.

Thomas thought that surely they should have argued - at least he thought that there must come a moment when Oliver would finally grow angry with him for failing to save more of his arm. He thought that Oliver was likely still under shock, as if any moment now he would look down at the ruins of his arm, realise what had happened, and throttle Thomas with the remaining hand. That moment never came, and it took Thomas months to stop waiting for it.

Oliver did get angry, just not with Thomas. "If we weren't locked up in here and forced to do this work, it wouldn't have happened. I'm not the first to lose a bit of flesh and bone - that they put you next to me with a blade is proof enough they view our limbs as expendable. No, shove off, I don't want you holding my hand, not  _now."_ Thomas recoiled. "I'm angry, but not with you - leave me - just leave me be, a moment."

He grew moodier than before, welcoming Thomas' attempts to help one day and bristling at them the next. Thomas took the changes as they came and tried to mold himself to them, learning to read what sort of day it would be. Oliver's tasks changed somewhat, but the overseers seemed content enough to pair him with Thomas for work that he couldn't accomplish alone. By himself, Oliver was more often required to scrub floors and clean the horses' tack and stir the great tubs when laundry needed doing (and it always needed doing). He still worked the fields, though less regularly now. Sowing and weeding were his usual tasks when he was sent out with the other field workers. Sometimes he was set to copy accounts or do other paperwork for Oglethorpe.

They didn't become lovers. For a brief few days, Thomas thought they might, of sorts - his body had grown stronger, and he felt full to burst with the newly-acquired hardness of his flesh, the fresh callouses. For the first time in as long as he could remember, his body was capable of arousal again: the first time he woke stiff in his breeches, he cried until he had no tears left in him. He couldn't tell if it was from relief at still being able to attain so humble and human a thing, or from despair that he should rejoice so much at this smallest of achievements.

After a half-hearted attempt at hasty intimacy in a dark hayshed, he and Oliver abandoned the idea quickly. They were lonely and hungry, but that wasn't enough to make the pain worthwhile. They fumbled blindly against the wall, Oliver pressed a speculative thumb to the corner of Thomas' mouth and Thomas reflexively pushed him away as hard as he could, sending Oliver tumbling to the floor. They slunk in shared silence back to their cots in the communal sleeping hall.

Nevertheless, Thomas found that he had missed sharing himself with another human being, and it felt good to open himself, to unearth painful things.

He spoke of all sorts of things with Oliver. He told him about the many times he had gotten into trouble as a boy, told him about Miranda, his plans to change Nassau and reshape the Empire in its kinder image.

He never spoke of Bethlem.

They talked in night-shrouded whispers about their loves. Thomas hadn't allowed himself to think with such focus of James in a long time. It hurt, but to talk of James was to keep him alive. Speaking of him was now something Thomas inflicted upon himself as one cleaned a wound that refused to fully heal; a purposeful pain that one bore knowing that to let it fester was to make things worse. He mentioned Miranda too, but what he had shared with her had always been of a different nature, and he guarded her more closely to his chest.

Oliver spoke of his Alexander as of a map that he needed to recall from memory, over and over so as not to lose it, for it to guide him in the future. He sometimes spoke of escaping and returning to his beloved, and Thomas said little in return, not knowing what he should run towards.

"He always had a verse on his lips," Oliver said wistfully. "And he'd constantly fumble for the poet or the title. He mismatched authors and quotes so often I wonder if he didn't do it on purpose."

Another time he told Thomas of his and Alexander's first encounter.

„We met at a masquerade at the pleasure gardens. Night and coloured lights all around. There was music playing, and I danced with one of the women and turned the wrong way to switch partners. Ended up chest to chest with a stranger. Face to chest,“ Oliver corrected himself, and Thomas smiled. Oliver was short even by the most generous standards. „I was so mesmerized by his beautiful brown eyes that I didn't think to move, and we caused a small commotion because everyone was sent bumping into each other. Alexander and I fled the scene, laughing, and didn't step back into the lights all night, except to fetch more champagne and pastries.“

Oliver paused, hand twitching in his lap. It was much like the rest of him, stocky and solid and square. Unimpressive at first glance but steadfast as the earth itself.

„What are you thinking of?“ Thomas asked.

„His hands that night. I drank something iced and he took my hand afterwards, and his fingers were so warm around mine.“ Oliver sighed. „We met once a week after that, in a molly-house that rents out rooms by the hour. Every Tuesday night. First names only. He was always so concerned with being found out.“

„How did you end up here?“

„Alexander didn't appear for one of our meetings, and that was the night the house was raided. I don't know why he stayed away, or if maybe he was just late.“ Oliver made a face, furled and unfurled his hand. „I don't know what I'll say when I find him. I spent some time wanting to punch him, for failing to be there with me when it all happened. But that would only have meant two of us imprisoned. I wonder what he'll think of me when he sees me.“

Thomas reached out and squeezed his hand. He never discouraged Oliver from his lovelorn fantasies, even when they were about Alexander turning up at the plantation and rescuing him, sweet foolish nonsense like that.

Oliver looked at Thomas' left hand on his own and chortled. Thomas raised a brow at him.

„I was just thinking,“ Oliver said. „Between the two of us we have enough hands for one healthy pair.“

\---

James arrived in chains.

"Let's leave," he whispered into Thomas' hair not half an hour after his arrival.

And Thomas buried his face in James' neck, pressed so close that he could feel the rough weave of James' collar against his tongue as he moaned, _"Yes."_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> comments are my fuel ❤️ this one was a tough birth, let me know what you think.
> 
> historical oglethorpe actually did quite a bit of good, establishing connections with the local native tribes, etc. given that the show presents us with a sugar plantation full of armed guards, i can't imagine that this version of the man is quite so noble. sugar plantations were brutal even by general plantation standards.


End file.
